How do I find books?

Books (also known as monographs) come in all sizes and types. They fall into the category of Secondary literature, in that they don't report new research -- they can be seen as a form of review. Most books in the sciences consist of review-type chapters written by various authors and compiled by one or more editors, and they are rarely peer-reviewed. They are a good way to learn about a broad topic in a way that isn't possible with journal articles. They are usually written for an audience of researchers and advanced students.

Textbooks fall in the category of Tertiary literature, and are books written specifically for the purpose of teaching students. They contain review sections and exercises.

E-books are simply books that you can access in an electronic format. Not all books are available this way. E-books from the library are not the same as popular books you'd buy for your personal e-reader device; they often can't be downloaded in full, your period of use may be limited, and there are usually restrictions to printing pages.

Search for books and e-books in our Library Catalog. You can search by keyword, subject heading, author name, or ISBN. The Catalog will tell you if we have a book in the UT Libraries, where it is located, what its current status is, and allow you to request it if it's checked out to someone else. If it's an e-book, you will find a link to it.

Two things that are important to remember:

The topics of books are broader than you'll find in journal articles, so when you're searching for them you need to use fewer and more general terms than you would in an article search. For example, you won't find a whole book about chromatographic analysis of BPA. Nor will you find books about most specific chemical compounds, except for the most common ones. But you'll find hundreds of books on various chromatographic techniques that might help your research.

When you do a keyword search in a library catalog, you are NOT searching the full text of the book, or its index, or (in most cases) even the table of contents. You are basically finding only words that appear in the book's title and subject headings, which are typically very general.